When self-help turns deadly

Australian woman Rebekah Lawrence

leapt to her death from an office window in Sydney after participating in an intense self-help course, which a coroner said was run by people

“ill equipped” to know she needed intervention. Rebekah died two days after completing a four-day seminar run by self-development company People Knowhow. After the inquest, her husband, David Booth, said of the company: “They didn’t mean to do it.

It’s just unqualified people doing damaging things to people’s minds.” Meanwhile, in Quebec a woman died after a nine-hour sweating session in

which she was covered in mud, wrapped in plastic and blankets, and had a box placed around her head. Chantal Lavigne, 35, participated in a “Dying in Consciousness” seminar led

by a self-proclaimed therapist. Elsewhere, teen wilderness retreats were the subject of a US government investigation following several deaths, including a 15-year-old boy who died in 2000 when two staffers held him down for 45 minutes, after he refused

to return to the camp site.

The Weekly acknowledges that the majority of personal-growth organisations operate with their

clients’ best interests at heart. If this story causes concern, you can call Lifeline on 0800 543 354.